The proposed research program addresses the involvement of affective processes in social perception and, specifically, the effects of affective processes on the important measurable consequences of social perception, i.e., social categorization and social judgment. The three primary assertions to be empirically addressed are: 1) affective responses to social stimuli are encoded as one internal representation if the stimulus that elicits the response, 2) affective responses systematically influence the semantic responses involved in social perception and 3) these processes can occur automatically. Within each series of experiments designed to examine the outline propositions, the boundary conditions of the effects will be considered. In addition, multiple indices of affective response will be measured. In most of the proposed experiments, affective responses to social target stimuli will be manipulated through the use of metacontrast technique. Specifically, slides of target stimuli will be preceded in time by brief presentations of affect-arousing stimuli, most often these stimuli will be slides of faces displaying particular emotional expressions. The present research program should advance scientific understanding of the relationship between higher-order cognitive and affective processes, as well as contribute to contemporary theories of social perception.